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| Syd |
 Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:23 am |
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The Secret of Their Eyes: [Spoilers abound; this is a thorough review, which I haven't done fir a while] This Argentinian murder mystery won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film a couple of years ago, and, though it probably didn't deserve it, is still an interesting film with some fascinating aspects. It's not just a murder mystery, but a tale of unrealized love, political corruption, passion, hideous evil and hideous revenge. It doesn't all work--indeed, doesn't come close to all working--but it kept me involved all the way through.
The "present day" in this film is 2000. Retired crime investigator Benjamin Esposito is writing a novel based on the 1974 rape-murder of Liliana Coloto, a 23-year-old schoolteacher. He consults an old friend Irene Menéndez-Hastings. who was also involved in the case; Irene was his newly-minted department head in 1974. Irene is pronounced in three syllables and Hastings is pronounced as you would expect; she is upper-class and educated at Cornell. She's obviously stuck between two worlds and Esposito is immediately smitten by her but two cowed to do anything about it. Benjamin is convinced that the judge who runs his department is a moron, but he feels that everyone else is as well, and it doesn't occur to him to look in the mirror.
Liliana's husband is an obvious suspect, but there's no evidence and he was obviously obsessively in love with his young wife. A rival detective arrests two construction workers, but Benjamin has already investigated them and knows they were innocent, so he confronts his rival and has him exiled. But there are no suspects, until Benjamin goes through a lot of photographs and notices that in many of them one of Liliana's friends is staring at her, not the camera. He realizes immediately that this is the murderer.
The man is Isodore Gomez; Benjamin asks Liliana's husband about him (which alerts the husband). Still, there is little evidence, and no clue to Gomez's location, so Benjamin and his alcoholic colleague, Pedro Sandoval, break into Gomez's mother's residence in search of letters the son might have written. They find the letters but (1) the mother's dog discovers the detectives (2) the letters contain references to unidentifiable people from Gomez's home town and are totally unhelpful and (3) our idiot detectives have been identified, their search is blatantly illegal and the case is closed.
Except--Ricardo Morales (Liliana's husband) spends the last year haunting railroad stations hoping to spot his wife's killer. Morales doesn't believe in the death penalty; that is too easy, and it ends; he wants life imprisonment. You can't close a case that easily because of the human cost. Benjamin and Pedro want the case reopened.
Pedro the alcoholic, realizes that someone who is really passionate about something doesn't abandon it at the drop of the hat. He knows all the obsessions of his fellow bar patrons, and one of them is obsessive about the Buenos Aires soccer club called the Racing Club (aka the Academy). The obscure references are to happenings of this club; which mean Gomez and his mother must be obsessive about this soccer club.
Benjamin and Pablo get the case reopened, and start staking out soccer games featuring the Racing Club. At one game, Pedro sees Gomez,* but when they weave through the crowd, they hit on the wrong person. But as they are withdrawing, Benjamin realizes he actually saw Gomez, and he, Pedro and the other cops pursue Gomez through the soccer stadium, until he's caught on the field.
I thought this sequence was oddly shot; what I didn't realize was it's one of the most astonishing tracking shots in the history of cinema. That's right; the whole sequence in the stadium is one tracking shot and I haven't a clue how they could possibly have filmed it. Nobody else could either, which is a big reason it won the Oscar for Foreign Language Film.
So Gomez is caught, and is interrogated. Benjamin and Pedro have a good cop/bad cop routine down, but Pedro is nowhere to be found. But Irene is present at the interrogation. Earlier, she lost a button in a confrontation with Benjamin. Now she catches Gomez staring at her chest--and is still staring at her chest regardless of his jeopardy. She realizes he is indeed the murderer and taunts him until he confesses. The case is solved, our murderer is convicted, and we're 80 minutes into a 129 minute film.
Until now, everything that has happened can be translated to American film with no trouble. Al Pacino plays Benjamin, Cillian Murphy plays Gomez, Jennifer Lopez is Irene, and the film is impossible because it's 1975 and this is Argentina and the next events do not translate.
Because everyone sees a speech by Isabel Peron, and there is our brutal rapist-murderer freed by our hero's enemy out of spite, because Gomez is oh, so helpful in convicting enemies of the state. Our hero has no choice but to flee, Irene saves him, but it doesn't occur to him, that, despite her impending marriage, that just perhaps, she might want to go with him...
So it is 2000, Argentina is democratic, Benjamin is writing his novel, and it occurs to him to find out whatever happened to Ricardo Morales and Isodoro Gomez. He can find Morales, who has moved on to a meaningless existence devoid of his love of Liliana (despite all those photographs of him and Liliana) Morales tells Benjamin that his search is over; Morales killed his wife's murderer many years ago, which is why Benjamin could never find Gomez.
As Benjamin drives away, he remembers everything Ricardo and Pedro told him, about how people can never escape their passion, and how Ricardo thought the death penalty was never sufficient. So Benjamin stops, goes back to Morales's mansion. and sure enough, Morales has kept Gomez prisoner for 25 years, because Benjamin promised life imprisonment and couldn't deliver, so Morales had to. Even though it meant he was a prisoner as much as Gomez, the man he (and Benjamin) will never speak to.
The Secret in Their Eyes has its problems, a lot of which are not the personnels' fault. The inexplicable pardon of Gomez is part of the Generals' campaign to suppress dissent. Argentina went through a period of thugocracy that lasted at least through the Falklands War and that's well represented here. The end where Morales is imprisoning Gomez makes sense as a logical consequence of what happened before but doesn't make sense as something that a human being would do. It's like we're suddenly into Lisbeth Salandar's world rather than Irene Hastings.
*Yes I think he does. Pedro sees Gomez, but going through the crowd, he gets turned around, and Benjamin makes the hit. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:03 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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And the kitchen sink was framed very dramatically....
The two key points to the investigation -- the photos and the soccer connection -- were rather strained and implausible.
I liked the scene where they break in to the mother's house, which turns out to be an inept failure, as well as unethical.
But that was about all I liked.
The stadium tracking shot was rather show-offy.
I don't recall it being all one shot, but that overhead zoom was eye-catching, but almost seemed to be the whole reason they added in the football angle. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:23 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Saw Working Girl for the first time in years (I own the film, but there are just so many hours in a day and you can't see everything all the time). Anyway, what a movie! Even though you might suspect it would date, dealing with an 80s business milieu as it does, it seems as fresh as the day it was made.
Mike Nichols was praised to the skies for his earliest film work like The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--and though I think Nichols is a bona fide genius, I'm far from nuts about TG and am only mildly in love with his work on Woolf. My favorite Nichols films are, without question, Working Girl and Postcards from the Edge, films in which his talent for finding truth behind the humor and humor behind the truth reach their fullest flower, the kind of flower that he found in his performances with Elaine May much earlier in his career.
The sad part about Working Girl, which is entertainment of the highest order in every way, is that Melanie Griffith as exec-in-the-making Tess McGill is so charismatic, and so attractive, and so promising. It's sad because Griffith's seeming addiction to facial surgery has currently made her all but unemployable. Well, she'll always have Tess McGill, and so will we.
We'll also have the marvelous work from Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, and--particularly--Joan Cusack. And the wondrous song "Let the River Run," which won Carly Simon an Oscar. It permeates the movie and deepens it immeasurably.
Working Girl. A "working" definition of cinema heaven. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:40 am |
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As for my other favorite Nichols film, Postcards from the Edge, IMO it features by far Meryl Streep's best performance ever, the one which should have garnered her the Oscar she won undeservedly for last year's garbage heap The Iron Lady.
In Postcards she was hilarious, moving, and lovable, and sang two songs gorgeously. A great performance, a great movie, with a superb supporting turn by Shirley MacLaine--and of course largely unappreciated right down the line. Streep was nominated, but was never expected to win. She followed it up with my three other favorite Streep turns--Defending Your Life, Death Becomes Her, and The River Wild. I guess I like Meryl best when she's having fun. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:34 am |
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You and I have the same opinion on Nichols' best films (or, at least, the ones I like the best). i'd forgotten Postcards was one of his. He followed those two with Regarding Henry, which I really hated. Woolf's one of those films where I admire the performances and execution but find it really hard to watch. Closer is the same way except it's not quite as good.
"Let the River Run" is great if you take it straight and better if you take it ironically.
I didn't like Death Becomes Her, but I like Streep best in her less serious roles (except I loved Plenty, and even that has a strong satirical streak). She had a ball in Julie and Julia. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:56 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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| Syd--You and me, babe, about Regarding Henry, which represents Nichols's lowest ebb. A genuine turkey. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 11:35 am |
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Syd wrote:
"Let the River Run" is great if you take it straight and better if you take it ironically.
The ironic take, I am assuming, is making something Biblical-sounding out of the quest for cred on Wall Street. Am I right? Never quite thought of it that way, but you have a great point.
I know the man who came up with the Finnegan's Wake quotation that begins the song. He used to be married to Carly Simon, and she's quick to credit him with the inspiration for the beginning of the song. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:14 pm |
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Didn't like the bleak ending of TSOTE, both for plausibility considerations and for, well, bleakness. But the study of obsession was interesting, maybe worth another look. Don't recall the tracking shot....longer than Dunkirk in Atonement?
Nice review - I should call 3rd Eye "lethargic" more often!  |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:15 pm |
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| Simon says she was inspired by Walt Whitman, too, though I'm not sure how. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:44 pm |
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bartist wrote: Didn't like the bleak ending of TSOTE, both for plausibility considerations and for, well, bleakness. But the study of obsession was interesting, maybe worth another look. Don't recall the tracking shot....longer than Dunkirk in Atonement?
Nice review - I should call 3rd Eye "lethargic" more often!
I may be confusing terms here. The whole stadium sequence is one uninterrupted take that apparently was a logistical nightmare and I have no idea how it was filmed. It and the one in Atonement are both about five minutes long. The famous tracking shot in Goodfellas is three minutes long, while the one that opens The Player is almost eight minutes long, and the one that opens Russian Ark is 96 minutes long  . |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:20 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Hitchcock's Rope (1948) was an early experiment in uninterrupted takes. The whole movie was presumably one take, though they had to break for reels, but Hitchcock masks it with camera movements which seem to make the move uninterrupted. The movie wasn't very good anyway, with egregious overacting by John Dall and dull performances by Jimmy Stewart and Farley Granger.
This was not a very auspicious beginning to Stewart's ultimately super-successful pairing with Hitchcock, which resulted in the twin triumphs of Rear Window and Vertigo. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:31 pm |
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| I liked Rope a little better than you did. The black humor was fun. But I think "mediocre" might sum up my response to it. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:59 pm |
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| sorry, itchy trigger finger. |
Last edited by Syd on Sun Apr 29, 2012 7:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 7:26 pm |
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Samurai 3: Duel at Ganryu Island concludes Hiroshi Inagaki's epic adaptation of a fictionalized life of Musashi Miyamoto starring Toshiro Mifune. Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto received the final noncompetitive Oscar for Foreign Language Film, but I thought it hadn't dated that well; I'd read the series improved, but I found part 2 rather dull, so I put off seeing part 3. I shouldn't, because this is a fine film that hasn't dated at all, climaxing with one of the greatest swordfights in movie history, as Musashi has to face the brilliant young samurai Kojiro in what amounts to a samurai shootout at sunset.
Part 1 had Musashi as practically an animal until he is tamed by a legendary Buddhist priest. In part 2, he wanders all over Japan fighting duels and honing his skills while deserting Otsu, who loves him.
One of my favorite scenes has Musashi (Toshiro Mifune) calmly using chopsticks to pick off flies, freaking out the horse dealer who is picking a fight with him. The horse dealer leaves very hastily. This must be where "The Karate Kid" came up with the idea. In part 3, he has traded in his arrogance for humility but is still an incredible blockhead toward women.
Musashi has been challenged by Kojiro, and, after postponing a planned showdown for a year, goes off to live in the countryside. After encountering a village beset by bandits, decides to settle there with his apprentices and become a farmer, and eventually train the villagers to defend themselves. There is a humorous subplot that every time they are beset by bandits, Musashi and his companions get richer by capturing property from the bandits. Eventually he is joined by the long-suffering and rather whiny Otsu, and by Akemi, who also loves him, but, since she was the daughter of a bandit woman, he doesn't trust her. For good reason, since the bandits captured her and want her to betray the villagers.
So we get a great battle between villagers and bandits somewhat reminiscent of Seven Samurai. Then, a year up, it's off to Ganryu Island for the classic swordfight. Or actually staff vs. sword, since Musashi used what amounts to a quarterstaff against Kojiro's katana. This last battle is fought on a beach with Musashi in the water with his back to the sun and Kojiro in the wet sand. It's really an amazingly striking scene. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 1:01 am |
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Location: Upstate NY
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| David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method is a subdued but intelligent rendition of the stormy relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. Fine performances by Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley. |
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